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Families of schools
As part of the City Challenge, every primary and secondary school in London, Greater Manchester and the Black Country will be provided with a ‘Families of Schools’ resource; a data set for schools which shows:
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each schools’ rate of improvements and level of attainment averaged over three years
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performance in key subjects at KS2 and KS4
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free School Meal, deprivation and ethnicity data
The Families of Schools resource was first introduced as part of the successful London Challenge programme and has helped schools to compare their performance with other schools who are working in similar circumstances. Headteachers have found this useful, non-judgmental and a spur to action.
You can access online versions of Families of Schools for all three City Challenge areas.
Primary and secondary families
Each edition of Families of Schools puts schools across a City Challenge region into statistically similar groups based on their pupil intake and previous performance. The purpose of such groupings is to point schools towards similar schools facing similar circumstances with whom they can then share practice and experiences.
There are also contextual families, pulling together those schools which have significant proportions of pupils who have English as an additional language and high pupil mobility. They enable primary and secondary schools that have significant proportions of pupils with these characteristics to further compare themselves and share their experiences with similar schools.
Openness among schools
Families of Schools has promoted openness amongst London schools and challenged them to share best practice and look at joint solutions. It is also expected to promote collaboration across schools in Greater Manchester and the Black Country over the next three years.
Using Families of Schools
There is no obligation for schools to use Families of Schools. However, we strongly recommend that schools use the resource self-evaluation and improvement. Generally speaking, there are three levels at which schools can engage with Families of Schools:
Level one – comparing your school with others
Senior Leadership teams should familiarise themselves with Families of Schools alongside other performance data as part of the self-evaluation process. They should ensure that their staff are aware of the resource, and that SIPs are also engaged with it.
Level two – seeing what you can learn from /share with others
Leadership teams should organise visits to other schools in their Family to compare and contrast school improvement approaches. Organised curriculum visits will also enable those schools who are achieving significantly better subject results to share their practice with others in their family.
Level three – sharing knowledge effectively with others
This stage is characterised by schools resolving to actively work together as a family; organising thematic events, offering joint staff development, managing vacancies together, etc.
Over the course of the next three years (2008-11) the DCSF hopes to develop this to include additional functionality based in part on what schools say would be helpful. Watch this space for those developments.
